


love won't let us out of here alive

by Lirazel



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2316680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was one of Pedro’s conversation starters back when they were still schoolkids: <i>Who do you most want with you when the zombie apocalypse comes?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	love won't let us out of here alive

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote a thing (I don’t _know_ ). And a lot of people are dead, so don’t read it if that upsets you.

It was one of Pedro’s conversation starters back when they were still schoolkids, one of the silly hypothetical questions he’d ask whenever Beatrice and Benedick’s snarking started to turn ugly, stepping in to provide them with something to argue about that didn’t matter at all because the premise was so ludicrous. He had a seemingly never-ending supply of them, and this one was meant to be just as silly as any of the others: _Who do you most want with you when the zombie apocalypse comes?_

It must have been a Wednesday because history was right after lunch and the tests were always on Wednesdays, and Beatrice remembers the heavy weight of her textbook open in her lap for some last minute studying, the edge biting into her stomach as she leaned forward to contest some point of Ben’s. It was a sunny day, mid-summer, and Ben was wearing a t-shirt that said _Hand over the tea and nobody gets hurt_ ; she remembers being annoyed at the sight of the cheerful red letters as she sneered at Ben’s words, like the shirt only made it more onerous that Ben had yelled, “Buffy Summers!” before the question was even fully out of Pedro’s mouth.

“Who would choose Buffy over River Tam?” Beatrice had insisted. River Tam was a supergenius, which would come in useful in apocalyptic situations—never mind that Ben says she talks in riddles; Bea _likes_ riddles; she’d figure them out—and doesn’t he remember the shot of the door opening and River standing over all the Reavers’ corpses, sword and ax glinting in her hands? Buffy never fought that many bad guys at once except in the finale when she had help from Faith and all of the other new Slayers. Clearly River Tam, with her experience fighting so many at once, would be the superior choice for apocalyptic-of-the-undead-variety companionship.

“You like Buffy better than River,” Hero murmured as the bell rang and their friends scattered from the lunch tables and headed indoors. “She’s always your answer to that question.”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t agree with the dickhead, could I?” Beatrice hissed back.

Hero laughed and tossed her hair over her shoulder before looping her arm through Beatrice’s. “Well, if I were in a zombie apocalypse,” she announced, “I’d want _you_ with me.”

“What good would she do you? While no one appreciates her lethal linguistic abilities as much as I do—because, let’s face it, no one has to suffer from them like I do—I don’t really think they’d do much good against zombies,” Benedick said, holding the door open. He followed them into the hallway with his arms outstretched and his eyes rolled back into his head, making the most obnoxious groaning sound. It was a terrible zombie impression. But then, back then they’d never seen real zombies before, didn’t even know they were real, just thought they were things to make jokes about because _Shaun of the Dead_ was really, really funny.

Beatrice was about to launch into him, of course, but Hero’s firm voice cut in before she could. “I want her with me because she’s my best friend, not because I think she could protect me best,” she said, eyes glinting with the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows. “I just want us to be together till the end.”

Ben had smacked his hands together into a prayerful pose and staggered into his class with what he probably thought was a swooning expression (he really just looked constipated) before Beatrice could shoot back that of _course_ she could protect Hero, she’d protect Hero to the _death_ if she had to.

But Ben had been right. Beatrice knows that now, a year and a hundred miles away, as she runs her fingers through Hero’s hair. It’s not silky and perfectly styled like it always was, and there are streaks of blood and dirt through it, marring the gold, but Hero’s still the prettiest thing in the room, just like she always was. Probably the prettiest thing in the whole fucking world.

They’d almost lost her today. They’ve had near misses before, but this time Beatrice’s body had been frozen in sick terror, her ribs turning to ice and crushing her heart in her chest: this time, she was absolutely certain she was losing her cousin and there was nothing she could do about it. The zombie had Hero, his stiff body unbothered by the struggles of her flailing limbs, and it was lowering its dead-eyed face towards hers, its gaping mouth only centimeters away from her skin when its head exploded like an overripe melon, blood and brains spewing everywhere, covering a sobbing Hero in gore as the again-lifeless corpse dropped her to the ground and slumped down on top of her.

For a heartbeat, Beatrice thought she’d killed the zombie with the power of her own desperate prayers, but then Ursula came up beside her, the gun still smoking in her hand and her eyes steely. The sight of her shot through Beatrice like the breaking of a spell and she stumbled over to her cousin, wrenching the corpse away and gathering Hero’s trembling body against her own. Ben had burst out of the store with his machete in hand, the kids rushing after him. “I heard a shot! But I thought we were out of bullets and—”

“I had one left,” Ursula says, her voice flat and quiet, and Bea wasn’t sure whether it was those words or the gore splattered all over Hero’s body that made her stomach heave. If Ursula had missed—but Beatrice hadn’t let herself think about that, had started shouting orders to look for a place to hole up for the night and twenty minutes later she and Ben and Ursula were dragging a heavy filing cabinet in front of the door of this warehouse while Dogberry hovered nearby and Verges tentatively patted Hero’s golden head. 

And now they’re safe, ostensibly, for the moment, and Hero’s sleeping with her head in Beatrice’s lap, as cleaned up as they could get her with some almost-dry wet wipes and a bottle of water. Beatrice listens to her cousin’s breathing for any hitches or gasps, but it’s steady now; she’d gotten herself under control when Beatrice had helped her to her feet and whispered that they _had_ to find shelter before more deadheads showed up, because where there’s one there’s always more, and she hadn’t shed a tear since then, but she only stopped shaking a few minutes ago when she finally fell asleep. Even in her sleep, her eyes and fists are screwed up tight like she’s having a nightmare, and the only thing Beatrice feels besides bone-deep tired is grateful that they didn’t have to get out Hero’s inhaler. She knows good and well that Hero’s weak lungs could just as easily steal her away as one of those rotting deadheads.

“Ben was right,” she whispers to Hero, her thumb brushing over the soft skin of her cousin’s cheek. _I’m no good at protecting her. What good do I do her?_

A mass of long limbs drops into a pile beside her and she doesn’t have to be looking at him to see the wince that accompanies the motion. Ben’s ankle never did quite set right after the attack when they lost Meg, and while he tries to pretend he’s just fine, Beatrice knows without him ever having said anything that it pains him after too long on his feet. “As much as I love hearing you say that, love—and it’s probably my favorite thing to hear you say, it being so rare and all—I’m not getting the enjoyment out of it I’d expect because I have no idea what I’m right about,” he says, leaning back against the wall, his arm just brushing against hers. “I mean, obviously I’m right about everything, but I always enjoy knowing what, specifically I’m right about. So free feel to explicate. In detail.”

The old Beatrice—the Beatrice of Before (before the zombies, before losing Leo and Meg and Claudio and the months of wondering what had happened to her parents and the aunties and her friends in Wellington and Pedro and Balthasar and the other students at Messina High she hadn’t even had time to get to know yet)—would have denied flatly that she said anything at all and then let him goad her into an argument in which she’d assert again and again that he’s _never_ right and she _always_ is and he’ll never, ever hear her tell him he’s right _ever not ever_. The words would have sparked between them as they tossed them back and forth, fighting just to have an excuse to focus their attention completely on each other, for the sheer pleasure of matching wits with a worthy opponent. Even earlier today she might have let him tease her into a little vocal volley, only a ghost of their old epic battles but still familiar enough to be comforting.

But right now she’s _so tired_. She’s so very, very tired and they almost lost Hero. _If I lose Hero, I don’t know if I can keep going_. It seems centuries ago she’d said that to Ben, voice pitched low and eyes fixed on his face, but it was really less than a year; they were in the school gym and they’d just lost Claudio. It had felt like confession, saying that out loud, admitting that kind of weakness, when she’d been the strong one since the dead woke, not breaking down into tears once, not even after locking a dead-eyed Leo in the bathroom and setting the house on fire. She’d killed him because she had to—because he was dead already and it wasn’t really killing, or at least that’s what Ben says—and she’d gotten Hero to the school without either one of them getting hurt and she’d found weapons and taught herself how to use them and made the others learn as well once they were all together and she’d kept them all alive until the day she hadn’t and Claudio had been pulled down by a mass of zombies on a supply run and Ben had to shoot him in the head and Beatrice had to be the one to tell Hero why Claudio hadn’t returned with them. Hero hadn’t cried, not like she had over her brother, but she’d gone very white and quiet and Beatrice had watched her worriedly until she’d finally fallen asleep, her face pinched and pale.

And then Ben had drifted over to her as she leaned against the folded-up bleachers and he waited beside her in silence till she’d lifted her eyes to his and made her confession. “If I lose Hero, I don’t know if I can keep going.”

He’d just killed his best friend—the boy he called brother—to keep him from the agony of being eaten alive, and here she was complaining about a loss that might not even happen, but he’d given her a wisp of a smile and said, “Well, we’ll just have to make sure you don’t lose her, then, won’t we?”

She’d wanted then, more than anything, to stumble into his arms and lean against him and let him hold her forever, but she couldn’t, not then. Her body was stiff with the tension she turned into strength, but she bent her neck just enough to lean her forehead against his shoulder, the only concession she’d allow herself, not touching him anywhere else, and breathed him in and he smelled pretty disgusting actually—it had been weeks since any of them had had a shower—but _alive_ disgusting, not dead disgusting, and that was what mattered.

She barely smells him now; he’s sitting close enough that she should be able to, but her nose is far too accustomed to the scent of dirty living bodies to even notice anymore. She can’t remember the last time they were all really clean. Beatrice had always been a bit of a mess (“A bit?” Leo would say, laughing at her, and she tries not to think of Leo anymore), but to her there was a distinct difference between messy—clothes strewn everywhere, piles of books and magazines, never knowing where her phone was—and dirty, and she’d always been careful not to be the latter. And of course Hero always smelled like a primrose and Beatrice thinks she can almost remember the scent of the fabric softener Ben’s mom had used—not that she allowed herself to smell Ben very much, but she’d gotten whiffs now and then, especially the summer when they were fourteen and they roughhoused and chased each other all over the neighborhood and watched the _Lord of the Rings_ extended editions in all day marathons (including all the commentaries) and lay in his backyard trying to decide which stars they wanted to visit in the Tardis and she knew she was in love with him and that he was in love with her and he’d figure it out sooner or later—they had plenty of time. That’s what she’d thought then. Plenty of time—just the right amount. 

Beatrice doesn’t know what time is anymore, whether she’s got too much of it or not enough. There are days when it seems like this hell is going to stretch on forever and days when she feels almost suffocated at the thought that she could die at any moment. She doesn’t remember what it’s like to be careless with time.

She has no idea what time it is now as she glances around the warehouse strewn with cardboard boxes and gilded with graffiti, but it doesn’t really matter. They sleep when they get too tired to go on and move on when they can’t bear to stay in one place any longer. The kids—that’s how she thinks of them, instead of by their weird little names—are curled up together like a pair of puppies next to Ursula, who’s sorting through all their supplies. Dogberry has his camera clutched tight to him even in sleep; the kids still narrate to it sometimes as though it still works, as though somewhere they’ll find a computer to edit videos and an internet to upload them on. That’s probably not entirely healthy, but she can’t fault them for their coping mechanisms, not even their refusal to tell their first—or real? she’s still not sure whether Verges is a nickname or not—names, no matter how Hero coaxes. 

Beatrice’s gaze skims over their still forms and settles on Ursula’s steady hands as they stack jars of potted meat and sort through the med kit. Beatrice might be the one they all treat as a leader, but she knows that it’s Ursula’s calm competence that’s really kept them all alive. Beatrice isn’t sure she’s done anyone any good at all.

“Do you remember that time Pedro asked us who we’d want with us when the zombie apocalypse came?” A little laugh cracks its way out of Beatrice’s lungs. “He said ‘when,’ not ‘if,’ I remember that so clearly. He was really into _The Walking Dead_ then. We used to text each other through the episodes.”

“Ah, so that’s what you’re finally conceding I was right about. Is this the part where you tell me that Buffy and her bonus punning skills would really be a much better protector than River Tam?” There’s a hint of humor lurking in his voice and Beatrice feels warm with affection that he can still tease her, after all they’ve been through. _He’s still Ben._ “To be perfectly honest, which you know as a rule I avoid, but what the hell, the world’s come to an end so I’ll just admit it: I picked Buffy because she’s hot. You know I’ve got a weakness for blondes who like to make with the spiffy wordplay. I’m not really so picky; I wouldn’t turn River away if she pounded on the door right now and told us she was here to rescue us.”

She would smile, if she had the energy, and she briefly considers telling him that Buffy was her first pick and she’d just argued with him for the sake of argument. But her mind is too fixed on the memory. “Hero said she’d want to be with me. And you asked her what good that would do.”

She feels him go still beside her. “Bea, that’s not—”

“And you were right. Buffy versus River never mattered, but that did, and you were right. I’m shit at taking care of her.”

When she glances over at him, his eyes are blazing and how can they be that blue? Most of the world seems to have been drained of color, but there are still glints of it now and then: Hero’s hair, Ursula’s glasses frames, Verge’s suspenders. Ben’s eyes. “That’s the biggest load of bollocks I’ve ever heard.”

Disagreeing with him is as natural as breathing, but she feels it sharply this time; it’s not automatic but something far more immediate. “I was useless today. If Ursula hadn’t had that bullet left—if she hadn’t made that shot—then—” She almost can’t say it, but she makes herself. She _won’t_ be weak, even if she knows she really is. “—then Hero would be dead.”

“Bea—”

“I couldn’t keep Meg or Claudio alive, and I had to kill Leo—I _killed_ Leo, Ben, I set the fucking house on fire with him inside it and—” Her voice is rising in shrillness and volume, and Ursula’s head has snapped up to eye her across the room. Beatrice knows if she keeps this up she’ll wake up Hero and the kids, and she should feel guilty, but she can’t stop herself.

“Beatrice, _stop_.”

Her words falter, and her breath with it, and before she knows what’s happening, Ben is gently easing Hero’s head off of her lap and settling it onto his bunched-up sweatshirt, and then he’s grabbing Beatrice herself by the arm and tugging her through a small door and into a back room. Boxes are piled even higher in here, and the light is dim through the grimy windows up near the ceiling, but Ben’s eyes are _so blue_ as he releases her arm and then grabs her by both shoulders, bringing his face close to hers so she can’t look away.

“Listen here, Beatrice Duke—No, stop running your mouth for once and _listen_ to me. I know you forget your ears even exist since they never get a workout, but let them have their time to shine, okay? _Listen_. You did not kill Leo. A zombie killed Leo, and you just did what you had to do to make sure that that body walking around wouldn’t hurt anyone else. You haven’t killed _anyone_.”

His voice is so intense, like it’s the most important thing in the world, making her understand this, and her stomach tightens at the memory of his eyes after he pulled the trigger and shot Claudio. He really had killed his best friend, and yeah, it was a merciful thing, a last desperate attempt to make sure Claud wouldn’t die a horrific death and come back to hurt anyone else, but still. He’d done it. Those had been Claudio’s eyes looking at him as he made the shots, not the empty eyes of the dead, not like Leo’s had been when she locked him in the bathroom. Ben had done what he had to do, just like she had, but what he had to do was so much worse.

Guilt, thick and acidic, clogs her throat. “It’s my fault about Claudio. I was the one who let him come on the supply run even though his ribs weren’t healed. Fuck, that was so stupid—of _course_ he wasn’t able to keep up when we had to run, if I’d just told him he had to stay with the others then—”

“And how were you going to stop him? He was his own person, love, just like everyone is, just like you always reminded us. He made the call to go, and he said his ribs were fine, and there was absolutely nothing you could do except tell him it was stupid to come, which you _did_.”

She’s shaking her head, and her ponytail, longer than she’s ever kept it, feels so heavy, or maybe that’s a different weight dragging at her. “But what you had to do—”

“He wanted me to, Bea. We’d talked about it. I’d told him that I’d rather one of you shot me than be eaten alive and he agreed. I did what he wanted me to do.”

Maybe some of the tension she hadn’t even been aware she was carrying loosens at his words, but not enough to banish her guilt. “But you should never have had to—I shouldn’t—if I’d stopped him somehow, I wouldn’t have put you in the position where you had to—”

His voice breaks in just as hers gives way, and his hands, stronger and more calloused than they ever were before, are gripping her shoulders so tight it almost hurts. But she likes the bite; the reminder that he’s there. He’s breathless, incredulous as he says, “My God, Bea, nobody put me in that position! There’s been a _zombie apocalypse_ —what the fuck do you think you could have done to stop it? You aren’t actually queen of the world!”

But doesn’t he get it? It wasn’t just Claudio. “But Meg—”

She’s cut off by his explosive sigh. “Meg took a risk without talking to any of the rest of us first. You couldn’t have possibly known what she was about to do. You can’t control everyone, not even to keep them safe.”

She can’t stop shaking her head; he still doesn’t _understand_ , and she doesn’t know how to help him. _It keeps happening._ “Today, with Hero—”

“Today with Hero, nothing happened. She’s fine and she’s sleeping right out there, just a little bit grimier than she was before, but that’s _it_ , love, she’s fine.”

“But it was so close and I couldn’t do anything!” The words burst out of her, lava-hot and just as uncontrollable. “And it keeps happening! We keep losing people and there’s nothing I can do about it and I almost lost Hero! I stood there and watched and there was nothing I could do because she was too far away and I’m shit at protecting her, Ben, I’m shit at it.”

His fingers dig harder into her shoulders but she feels like the one who’s barely holding on, especially when she hears his voice crack as he says, “Bea, you’re a teenage girl! Without superpowers like Buffy or a government agency to mess with your brain like River. Hero does not expect you to be Xena, okay? You try your hardest—we all try our hardest—and that’s all we can do!” His face is so close to hers and his lips are chapped and his skin looks so thin around his eyes and she wants to cry, to cry and cry and cry until her body falls to dust, but no matter how choked up she is, she doesn’t think her body remembers how anymore. And she’s glad, because crying is weak. Maybe not when it’s one of the kids or Hero—or even Ben, she’s seen him cry several times and never thought him weak—but when it comes to her? It’s not something she can allow. She has to be stronger than that. Hero always said she was the strong one.

But then Ben lets go of her shoulders abruptly and yanks her to him and she collides into the thin sturdiness of him, feels the ropey muscles shifting in his arms where once he’d been nothing but lanky, and she tries not to think about the life they’ve been living for the past year and how he’s earned those muscles. He’s warm, giving off heat through his t-shirt, and she can smell him now, disgusting but _alive_ disgusting, not dead disgusting, and that’s what matters.

She clings to him as he speaks, like she’s wanted to so many times, feeling like something is cracking open inside her. His voice is pitched low, but she can feel the words move through his chest and into her body. “Love, listen to me. You can only do what you can do. And you do it, you do it every day. And Hero isn't your child, she isn't a child at all, and she takes care of you as much as you do of her. You give her the only thing she really needs: a reason to live. You’re her reason for living, Bea, don’t you know that? You inspire the kids to be as strong as they can and you and Ursula make all the strategic decisions and you give Hero a reason to live and—and you’re my reason for living, too, you know that, don’t you? You’re the only reason I want to keep going.”

Her hands are knotted in the cotton of his t-shirt and tears are squeezing their way out of her eyes and rolling down her dirty face and she can feel the beating of his heart against her cheek. And she shouldn’t cry, she shouldn’t, but—

“Ben—”

“Just be glad, Bea. Be glad Ursula had a bullet and made the shot. Be glad we found a place to stay tonight and that we have food at the moment. Be glad you’re alive and Hero’s alive and the rest of us are too. You just have to let yourself be glad. Love, sometimes I go weak with how grateful I am that you’re still here, and maybe it took a fucking zombie apocalypse for me to realize you’re the most important thing in the world to me, but you are. I wake up every morning and look at you and you’re so strong and your heart is so fierce and you’re so bloody gorgeous and it kills me that you take so much on, that you blame yourself for everything, when it’s not your responsibility, Bea, and you don’t have to be strong all the time. Stop telling yourself that you have to do it all, love, because you don’t. You do what you can do. And that’s all any of us ask of you. So stop asking so much of yourself.”

Sobs are shaking Beatrice’s body by the time his rambling speech peters out, and she had promised herself when she was fourteen years old that she would never, ever let Benedick Hobbes see her cry. _I’d die first_ , she’d swore to her red-eyed reflection in the mirror, burning with the sting of her first broken heart but determined no one else should ever know, and maybe she sometimes cried when she was in the shower and couldn’t stop the tears from coming, but she made damn sure that she never even looked sad in front of him, damn sure that he knew just what a dick he was and how she didn’t care about him at all (and very definitely didn’t miss him). No one else would ever see that she was anything but strong, especially not Benedick. 

From the perspective of this moment, years later and on the other side of the apocalypse, she can admit to herself the truth: he was her weakness, all along, but she hated him for it and hated herself for allowing that weakness, and there was nothing she wanted more in the world than to keep Benedick Hobbes from ever, ever seeing how weak she could be.

But she’s weak now, and she’s sobbing into his chest, and his arms are wrapped around her, and fourteen-year-old Beatrice would be horrified, but nineteen-year-old Beatrice is nothing but grateful. Weak, yes, like he’d said, weak with gratitude that he’s still here and with her and that Hero is asleep in the other room and Ursula and the kids are okay and that they get at least one more day.

Her sobs are dying down into shudders when Ben pulls back a little and she can tell he’s trying to scrunch down so he can see her face, but she just buries it further in his shirt. “Don’t look at me.”

“Do you seriously think I care if I see you crying? Seriously? I still think you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met and the most gorgeous girl on the planet. Do you really think some tears are going to change that? Bloody hell, love, you caught me sniveling the other day and I didn’t die from shattered pride. I love you more than anything in the world, don’t you know that?”

She knows. She knew. She’d known when they were fourteen and arguing over whether to learn Elvish or Klingon. Even when he was insisting that he would never ever be in a relationship not ever, she’d known, deep underneath her pain, that he was just scared of what he was feeling and so was doing the only thing he knew how to do to hide it. And she knew even when she convinced herself to hate him, because she thought he would never admit it to himself, the truth of it lurking there in the darkest places inside her no matter how hard she tried to tamp it down. She knew it that day she and Hero left behind the dying fire that had consumed their home and finally made it to the school and she saw the look on his face when he realized she was alive. She’d known she loved him then, too, feeling so light at the sight of him that she could have floated away—or no, she’d already known, but that was when she admitted it to herself. And she’s known through all this long year, felt it in every small way he touches her, sees it in the way he looks at her like she’s a force of nature he’s in awe of, heard it in the way he swore he’d help her keep Hero alive. She knows.

And that’s the only reason she let herself cry, she realizes now. What the fuck does her pride matter when he loves her? She had convinced herself, when they were fourteen, that her pride was all she had and that she had to protect it no matter what, but now she knows it was never worth protecting at all, never worth fighting for. A year of hell has taught her exactly what is worth it and the answer is Hero and Ursula and the kids and Ben.

“You’re not my reason for staying alive,” she says abruptly, looking up at him and wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. “My only one, I mean.” As she’d stood watching the house Hero had grown up in burn down, trying not to picture Leo’s body burning with it, Beatrice had sworn to herself that she’d survive to keep Hero alive, that she would do anything for her cousin. “But you can be my backup reason.”

He used to grin so big it split his face in half. Now only the corners of his mouth turn up and he does most of his smiling with his eyes. It makes her heart ache. “Oh, thanks, love, that’s very generous of you. A heart of gold, my girl has.”

Her cheeks are burning now and she doesn’t know why. “I don’t mean—I was with Hero when it happened and she was the only one I knew was still alive, and I promised myself then—I had no idea whether you were dead or alive, Ben, I couldn’t even let myself think about it and I knew I had to take care of Hero and—”

He rolls his eyes and shakes his hair—it’s gotten long again and she needs to find a pair of scissors somewhere so it’s not always falling in his face, he really looks shaggy and ridiculous—out of his eyes, his eyes that are still smiling at her. “I was teasing, Bea. I knew what you meant. We’re all living for each other, the six of us. And you know I’d die for any of the rest of you. You do know that, right?”

It’s childish, but her fists are flailing against his chest before she knows it, fueled by the terror that surges through her at the thought of losing him, too. “Don’t you dare die, Benedick Hobbes! If you die, I swear to God I will study necromancy and find a way to bring you back and then I will _destroy_ you! I will follow you into hell and get the devil to teach me new ways to punish you and make you regret ever so much as thinking—”

The sound of his laughter, though huskier, creakier than it ever was before is so refreshing that she would cry again if her heart weren’t swelling at the way he’s looking at her. “Okay, Bea, I swear I won’t die. I couldn’t possibly let you live longer than me, right? You’d take it as a surrender, and I will never concede defeat.”

She thinks there’s a smile on her own face as she looks up at him, and she can’t remember the last time she smiled, but it’s no surprise at all that Ben can coax it out of her. “Well, I sure as hell am not dying first—you think I’d let you win? I’m too stubborn to die, don’t you know that?”

“Oh, no one knows it better than I do, love. Well fine then, I guess we’ll both just have to live forever.”

“Fine.”

It’s stupid, she knows, for them to make promises they can’t be sure they’ll be able to keep. If death comes for either one of them, there’s no real way to escape it; all the people she’s lost already have taught her that. But Beatrice was never one to be held back by reason, never one to back down from anything, especially not when Ben’s eyes were flashing a challenge at her. Since she was fourteen years old, when he looks at her like that, she’s risen to the occasion, fighting on as best she can even if she knows her position isn’t a solid one. She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to keep this promise to stay alive or the promise to keep Hero alive or any of the other things she’s sworn to herself over the past year, but she’ll throw herself into trying, and any time she thinks of lagging, she knows Ben will nudge her and raise an eyebrow and offer a challenge and she’ll surge on, and he’ll be right beside her, because they always keep up with each other: that’s what they do.

His face looks more relaxed and alive than it has in months and there’s his cheek-splitting grin that she’s missed so much. “I told you the best person to have with you when the apocalypse comes is a dangerous blonde with a sharp tongue, didn’t I, Bea?”

Well, the end of the world has literally arrived. She supposes she can afford to admit she was wrong.


End file.
